How Whatley Will Defeat Cooper In the North Carolina Senate Contest
As someone who has spent an exceptional amount of time with both Roy Cooper and Michael Whatley, with both of their announcements this week, I want to explain how Whatley will defeat Cooper this November.
Throughout 2016, 2017, and 2018, I worked as the Republican tracker tasked with attending Cooper’s public events and spent hundreds of hours watching Cooper campaign across North Carolina. I saw firsthand how Cooper had no qualms promising help to hurricane victims across Eastern North Carolina, while his administration utterly failed them. During 2020, I watched Cooper shut down small businesses and close schools, while ignoring the science on COVID. If North Carolinians want a Senator who will lie to their face and vote to destroy their families, they can vote for Cooper.
In 2020 and 2021, I had the privilege to serve as the Communications Director for the North Carolina Republican Party and worked with Whatley every day to communicate during tumultuous political times. Here is how Whatley is going to defeat Cooper in November: maximize the operation, meet voters on the campaign trail, and engage with new media.
North Carolina will likely be the most expensive Senate race in the country. Whatley knows how to raise money, and it is likely that outside groups will prioritize North Carolina given its importance in the overall Senate map. This may be the first election where political ad buyers run out of inventory on tv stations and digital ad space. In addition to raising money, Whatley knows how to deploy resources to mobilize voters.
In addition to maximizing the campaign operation, Whatley is a force on the campaign trail and can leverage these stops for local media hits. During the lockdowns, I helped Whatley host roundtable conversations across North Carolina, giving regular North Carolinians a voice that Cooper simply ignored. These roundtables highlighted the plight of regular North Carolinians outside the Raleigh Beltline, who suffered under Cooper’s policies. Whatley can employ similar campaign trail tactics to highlight the positive impact of the America First agenda, compared to the Cooper-Biden legacy of incompetence. All in front of local North Carolina media.
That is exactly what now U.S. Senator Dave McCormick did to defeat former Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania in 2024. Like North Carolina in 2026, Pennsylvania in 2024 was the center of the political universe and ad buyers were running out of inventory. McCormick leverage campaign stops at college football games to generate media attention, to further his campaign message to persuadable voters. This proved to be a key tactic that led to victory.
Finally, as RNC Chairman Whatley has deep experience engaging with national and new media across the country. I witnessed firsthand that Whatley can effectively drive a message through these interviews. As the media landscape changes, and North Carolina’s legacy outlets continue to diminish themselves through biased coverage, Whatley has an opportunity to drive the conversation through non-traditional channels. This is what President Trump did in 2024, and Whatley is more than capable of implementing these tactics.
While Whatley works to methodically run his race, Cooper will face challenges of his own. Right now, Cooper is at the high point of his support, and it should not be surprising if he does well in the polls given his name ID until campaign season really begins next year. But every day, Cooper will need to decide between alienating persuadable voters, offending his base, or discouraging both through silence.
As I previously noted, Cooper faces the challenge of bridging the gap between his radical base and persuadable voters. Midterm elections are lower turnout affairs. Activating the base is more important in a midterm compared to the general election. And the progressive base wants things that are wildly out of touch with persuadable voters.
Democrat activists want a fighter, not Cooper’s false talking point that he “worked with Republicans.” Activists want to defund ICE, while persuadable voters support Trump’s deportation plan that prioritizes removing dangerous criminals. Liberals want a single payer healthcare, while persuadable voters want patients to remain in charge of their healthcare decision. Woke progressives demand that everyone, including their leaders, adhere to their radical gender ideology, while persuadable voters support Republican policies of protecting women’s sports and kids from dangerous procedures. Democrats long to implement a socialist agenda that redistribute wealth, while Americans want to live the American dream. The list goes on, but on every issue Democrat activists want policies that are radically out of touch with persuadable voters.
For the last several decades Cooper has sided with the far-left against North Carolinians, but as his campaign announcement shows he plans to shamelessly distance himself from his record. Throughout the campaign Cooper, when faced with the issues voters care about, he will either need to side with his fellow woke activists, or flip flop in an attempt to appeal to persuadable voters. Or Cooper will remain silent, like he is currently doing with the North Carolina Democrats anti-Israel resolution, which will simply over time offend both sides.
Whatley needs to maximize the campaign operation, introduce himself on the campaign trail, and leverage new media to get his message out about the America First agenda. This is substantially simpler than Cooper’s task of navigating a minefield of figuring out how to minimize the number of voters offended.
